Be gracious to me, oh Lord, for to you do I cry all the day.
– Psalm 86:3
There’s a lot behind the context of this prayer of David in Psalm 86. He is struggling. He’s in trouble. In verse seven, he says, “In the day of my trouble, I call upon you.” He’s facing trials. He knows his sin against God. He talks about in verse five… How God is forgiving and abounding in steadfast love to all who call on him. When you get to the end of the chapter, he’s talking about how insolent men have risen up against him or seeking his life, and he looks to God for his help. He asks for his grace, which is the whole tone of the whole Psalm. Verse three summarizes it, “Be gracious to me, oh Lord, for to you do I cry all the day.”
Psalm 86:3 shows us how dependent we are on God’s grace.
And I just want to encourage you to view your day this way. From the moment we wake up in the morning, we are dependent on the grace of God, on the mercy of God that’s new every morning. We need God for everything good in our day. We need God for breath… For just a very basic things of life. We are totally dependent on him. And we need him for strength and for wisdom and for help. For power to resist sin and temptation for peace amidst of fallen world of turmoil around us. We need God for joy. We need God in every way.
So to look at your day as, okay, I’m totally dependent on God’s grace today. So I’m going to cry out to him all day. Not just in time alone with him in the morning or in the evening. Let concentrated time with God in your day lead to continual time with God all throughout your day where you’re just trusting in his grace and calling out to him knowing that he’s with you and walking with you all day long.
Psalm 86:3 challenges us to pray continually.
So God, we pray for this kind of perspective on our day and this picture of prayer throughout our day. We pray this for today or for listening to this at night for tomorrow. God, we need your grace at every moment of every day. We live totally dependent on your grace. And so help us to realize that and to press into that all the day. Help us to, as your Word says, pray continually as Psalm 86:3 says, to cry to you all day when we are struggling.
God, help us to cry out to you. Help us to turn first to you when we need wisdom. God, when we face temptation, help us to cry out to you for help and to turn from it. As we have opportunities to share the gospel, help us to cry out to you for power from your Holy Spirit and boldness to share. When we make decisions, help us to cry out to you for wisdom. As we face trials, help us to cry out to you for peace and joy and perspective and hope.
God, amidst whatever our day holds, help us to cry out to you, and we praise you for your promise to hear us and to help us. Lord, help us to walk in intimacy with you all day long as we talk with you and cry out to you all day long. God, we praise you for this privilege that you’ve made possible for us. Help us to live in what Jesus has made possible for us, the curtain of the temple torn into us, invited to walk and live in your presence, us as temples of your Holy Spirit. Jesus, prays you for making this possible. Help us to lead others to this kind of communion with you through what you have done on the cross for them.
Prayer for the Maguindanao People
We pray that specifically for the Maguindanao people of the Philippines, 1.4 million Muslims who have little to no knowledge of what Jesus has done to make everlasting life in communion with you, oh God, possible. We pray the Maguindanao people of the Philippines would be reached with the good news of your love for them, that you would bless the church and the Philippines for the spread of the gospel to unreached people in the Philippines, and you would help us as the global church to come alongside them in any way you call us too so that the Maguindanao people of the Philippines would be reached with your grace so they could live in it all day long.
Can we pray this all in light of Psalm 86:3? In Jesus’ name, amen.
David Platt serves as a pastor in metro Washington, D.C. He is the founder of Radical.
David received his Ph.D. from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and is the author of Don’t Hold Back, Radical, Follow Me, Counter Culture, Something Needs to Change, Before You Vote, as well as the multiple volumes of the Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary series.
Along with his wife and children, he lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area.
